


Travel-Size For Your Convenience

by GloriousGarbage



Series: Misadventures with The Vast [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Elias is the worst, Fluff and Angst, G/T, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Jon is shrunk by a vast artifact and it speedruns his character development, Set in Season 1, Shrinking, Team Bonding, and all the emotional baggage that comes with it, mild spoilers up to season 3, mostly fluff tho after the first couple chapters, nothing like being forced to rely on your team to build trust, rated for language and canon-typical emotional distress, the vast, this is ridiculously self-indulgent
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:48:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27193324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GloriousGarbage/pseuds/GloriousGarbage
Summary: A very sleep-deprived Jon has an encounter with an artifact. Now, he must rely on his assistants to help navigate his new limitations and figure out how to change back.ORIn which Jon is tired, the Archives are disorganized, and the team loves Jon.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Martin Blackwood & Sasha James & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker
Series: Misadventures with The Vast [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1985107
Comments: 14
Kudos: 137





	Travel-Size For Your Convenience

**Author's Note:**

> This ridiculous piece of self-indulgence has been sitting in my drafts for months and I have finally decided to inflict it on you all. Please enjoy and let me know what you think.
> 
> CWs for this chapter: feelings of insignificance, unintentional nudity, someone assuming a sex-repulsed asexual is having sex

Jon may have overdone it.

In his defense, the last time he had checked his watch, it had been the perfectly reasonable time of 8:20. It was hardly his fault that time had rushed on without him so before he knew it it was 2 in the morning, and by then there was hardly any point in going home, was there? And with the cot currently occupied, he might as well keep working.

Which was to say he was now at 24 hours without sleep (and the last time he _had_ slept he’d only managed about 4 hours), which was perhaps not the best frame of mind to be in when approaching statements.

It was fine. They were all going into the discredited pile anyway, rambling things that often needed little more than a google search to be disproven. A google search and the fact that they easily recorded onto his computer, never mind that you would have to put a gun to his head to get him to acknowledge that as a deciding factor.

Jon sighed, taking a moment to scrub at his face and try to wake himself up. Without the… complications that came with the problem statements, he had actually managed to make a dent in the seemingly endlessly piling stack on his desk; no reason to stop now. Martin would be waking up soon, and while he was unreliable in almost every other way, his tea delivery was like clockwork. He’d be along shortly, and Jon could get the necessary caffeine to make it through the day.

Jon reached for the next folder on the stack, a surprisingly thin one, yawning as he did so. He flipped it open and blearily started skimming.

As tired as he was, he apparently still had the energy to scoff, at least when someone put something as ridiculous as this tosh in front of him.

The statement giver, a man named Carlisle Stevens, had been kind enough to get to the point of his story at the very beginning, explaining that he was giving his statement because he had somehow been shrunk down to the size of a mouse. Not actually the strangest thing Jon had read tonight, but more than enough to make him roll his eyes.

Jon flipped to the next page, then paused, brow furrowed. He flipped back to the first page, read the last line again, then looked at the first line of the second page. He scowled. Either the pages had been mixed up or there were pages missing, because these two sentences clearly did not follow each other. Carlisle had not even reached the supposed _how_ of his shrinking on the first page, yet the second page started with him already on the floor of his kitchen, describing a dining table several storeys tall and as big as a football field.

Jon huffed and flipped through the rest of the folder. There was not much to flip through. There was only one other handwritten page (which continued from the second and ended with the sound of Carlisle’s wife opening the front door) and a faded informational pamphlet on the solar system that looked like it had come out of a museum.

Jon pinched the bridge of his nose. His first instinct was to blame Martin, but honestly it could have been any number of things. The statement had been given in the late 80s, which meant it had been floating around in Gertrude’s joke of a filing system for almost 30 years. The missing pages could be anywhere.

Not that it mattered. Not that any of this nonsense mattered since these were all clearly fake and did nothing to help him understand what was actually going on in this place. But wouldn’t it be nice if things could just be where they were supposed to be? Wouldn’t it be nice if he could just do his job and do it well and not feel like absolutely everything was trying to sabotage him in that pursuit?

Jon realized with some alarm that his eyes had started watering and took some deep breaths to calm down. This was hardly something worth crying over, and if his brain had decided it was then perhaps it was time to take a step back. Maybe go to the break room, pretend he had just arrived instead of spent the night when Martin came out to putter around. He would probably see through it, but Jon knew Martin had been sleeping poorly in this place, so maybe he would be too tired to notice. They would have tea and a rather pathetic breakfast of granola bars together, and Jon would be as close to refreshed as he was going to get.

Course of action decided, he put the papers back into the folder, but he found himself pausing over the pamphlet. There was no explanation in the statement for why it was there, probably something elaborated on in the missing pages. Or it had nothing to do with the statement and had just been shoved in a random folder.

Jon flipped it open.

_Did you know that 1 million Earths could fit inside the Sun?_

Ah, one of those. A guide to the solar system with a gimmick of comparing the relative sizes of celestial bodies. Jon had already had his mind sufficiently blown by these facts as a child, but he found himself reading along anyway, cheek resting in his hand, vaguely curious if perhaps there were differences in modern knowledge compared to whenever these pages had been printed. (He couldn’t begin to guess beyond _sometime in the 1900s._ )

It started with comparing the different planets to each other, then the planets to the sun, then the sun to other stars. It illustrated the length of the solar system, how long it would take someone to walk to the moon, to Jupiter, to Pluto. It shared the age of the solar system, the age of the sun and the earth, and compared it to how long life had existed on this planet.

Inexplicably, Jon’s heartrate started picking up. How long had he been reading? The pamphlet was only a few pages, surely he should be done by now?

It moved beyond this solar system and began exploring others, measuring them against our own. It expanded to galaxies, and it explained light years. It numbered the stars. On and on it went, until Jon knew the age of the universe and its length from end to end.

_Did you know that the universe is constantly expanding, and all of these galaxies are only getting farther and farther away from each other?_

It returned to our solar system, to our planet. It expounded on the probability of life forming on this miserable little rock, and it explored, at great length, all the ways that life could be snuffed out. It talked meteor strikes and supernovas and black holes and more, all utterly unaware and uncaring to what was lost. Really, compared to all that, was anything lost?

_When we look at all this, does it really matter how many Earths can fit into the Sun?_

_Does the Sun really matter?_

_Does the Earth matter?_

_Do you-_

Jon dropped the pamphlet, gasping for breath, dread suffusing every inch of him. He didn’t understand exactly what had just happened, but he knew he had made a mistake. He needed air, he needed—Martin, Martin was in document storage, he should—

Jon shoved back from his desk and shot up to his feet. And then things got weird.

God, he was dizzy, he had time to think, and then he was tripping over his own shoes, and the floor was rushing up to meet him, and all at once things went very dark.

***

Martin glared at the office door, tapping his foot while he tried to decide what to do.

Martin was not naturally an early riser, but he had learned to be since moving into the Archives. The anxiety of Prentiss and the spookiness of his workplace meant that Martin slept lightly, which also meant he was awoken every morning by Jon’s arrival. Always at an ungodly hour. Except on days like this when Jon apparently never left.

Light was spilling out from under the office door, though he couldn’t hear any of Jon’s normal rustling movements. Martin was pretty sure he knew what that meant. Martin would open the door and find Jon asleep at his desk. Jon would jolt awake and try to act like nothing had happened. Martin would be exasperated, especially since he made a point of reminding Jon of the hour before going to bed, and Jon would snap about it not being in Martin’s job description to fuss.

Was knowing this going to change Martin’s actions? No, because Martin was hopeless, and even if his admonitions never changed Jon’s behavior, it was still Martin’s self-appointed duty to worry about him.

Accepting that he was never going to learn, Martin gave a cursory knock, then opened the door. He stared.

Jon was not asleep in his chair. Jon was nowhere to be seen. His clothes, on the other hand, the ones Martin had last seen him wearing before turning in for the night, were on the floor next to his desk.

“Um, Jon?” Martin called cautiously, a bad feeling beginning to raise its head.

There was nothing inherently sinister about clothes on the floor, he tried to tell himself. There was probably a logical, if weird, explanation. But the arrangement was putting him on edge. The shirt and trousers were laid out on the ground together like someone was trying to decide on an outfit, except they were facedown and a little crumpled. And the shirt was still inside the vest. And the shoes were on their sides with the socks kind of draping out of them. Most alarming of all were Jon’s glasses, which were on the ground near the head of the arrangement with one of the lenses popped out. All of it kind of looked like someone had fallen over and—

_Oh, God, Jon melted,_ Martin thought with horror, before mentally smacking himself. While not an impossibility in their frankly ridiculous line of work, it wasn’t a very helpful conclusion. Not without exhausting all the other, much more likely possibilities first.

“Jon!” he called again, stepping into the office to—what, check behind the desk? Sure, might as well see if his possibly naked boss was crouching behind his desk for some inexplicable reason. There was nowhere else in here for him to hide.

Martin had a surprisingly light step for a man his size (the better to not impose his presence on anybody), otherwise he probably wouldn’t have heard it. A distant voice, too quiet for Martin to discern words. Martin froze.

“Hello?” Martin called, holding still and listening intently. The sound came again, and this time he was able to catch it.

“…artin? Martin!” a muffled voice seemed to shout, and Martin—after glancing around fruitlessly—found his eyes drawn back to Jon’s clothes on the floor. There was a little lump hidden within the folds of the shirt that he hadn’t noticed at first, but it was hard to miss now that it was moving.

“Um…” Martin glanced around once more, hoping Jon or _someone_ would finally reveal themselves and explain what the hell was going on. No such luck. He sighed, resigned himself to whatever bullshit was about to happen.

Martin crouched down, reaching out and gingerly pinching the collar of the shirt, tensed to slam it back down in case it was something—a rat, or worse, one of Jane’s worms—he would need to trap in the cloth. He lifted the edge, peeked inside, and promptly yelped and dropped the shirt like he had been burned.

“Martin, this is the opposite of helpful!” the voice called again, and for once Martin was too dazed to fall into stammered apologies.

The lump was not a rat or a worm. The lump was his boss. Four inches tall and very much naked.

***

Jon had not fallen unconscious, nor had the lights in his office blown out. It was simply the dark green of his vest blocking out the light filtering in, though his eyes eventually adjusted (sometime after he had finished hyperventilating but before he had started to try and escape). That was ruined by his useless assistant letting some light in only to quite rudely drop him back into darkness.

“Martin, for God’s sake, let me out of here!” Jon shouted, once again trying to squirm towards the entrance. Was he absolutely mortified to be seen this way by his assistant? Yes. Was that mortification going to kill him when he was no longer under his shirt’s dubious protection. Probably. Was it practical to try and deal with this situation while trapped inside his day-old shirt? No.

“J-Just a second, Jon,” Martin finally called back, and there were some rustling noises, the sound of something being knocked off of his desk, a bitten off curse. What the hell was that idiot doing?

A moment later, light was once again flooding back into the space, but Martin’s face did not reappear. Instead, his hand—fingers longer than Jon was tall—appeared, holding a tissue. Jon blinked. Oh, that was actually very helpful.

The hand dropped the tissue then pulled back out of sight, the other hand still presumably keeping the collar held open. Jon crawled a few feet forward until he was able to stand up, then staggered to the tissue. It was surprisingly unwieldy, though maybe not that surprising since Jon tended to grab whatever was cheapest. It was like a very large, stiff, scratchy sheet, but he was eventually able to wrestle it around himself until he was decently covered. Which was still horribly inappropriate for the archives, but there wasn’t much he could do about that now.

Despite his earlier protestations, Jon found himself hesitating to step out, to face what was surely waiting for him. It only lasted a moment. As scared as he was, he wouldn’t be able to understand if he couldn’t see.

Jon strode out with as much dignity as he could muster, looked around, and immediately regretted it.

His office was not a large space, but now it was the most cavernous place he had ever been. To his right loomed his desk, now bigger than any house he had ever seen. To his left—Christ.

Jon knew, objectively, that Martin was a large man. He just didn’t come across that way, tending to speak softly and hunch in on himself like he was trying to take up the least amount of space possible. He made himself unobtrusive and easy to ignore when he wasn’t blundering into things.

That was not an option now. Even kneeling on the ground and leaning down to help, Martin loomed, huge and impossible. It was one thing to see him a piece at a time, an eye, a hand. It was quite another to see all of him at once, and it solidified in his mind exactly how dire this situation was, that this was actually happening.

With Jon out in the clear, Martin was able to drop the shirt and withdraw his hand. That simple movement was enough to make Jon startle so hard he almost fell over, almost dizzy as he tried to wrap his mind around something that big moving with such speed and ease.

The hand braced against the ground, and Jon looked up, up, up to see Martin looking down at him, clearly freaked out but tempered with concern.

“Jon, what the hell happened?” Martin asked in frantic whisper, and Jon was grateful, because he was sure if Martin had spoken at full volume it would have rattled his ears.

“I- I was looking through a statement,” Jon started, then took two skittish steps back as Martin started to lean down. Martin froze at Jon’s retreat, then instead turned his head to angle his ear down. Oh, Martin couldn’t hear him.

“I was looking through a statement!” Jon shouted. “And I think there was an unmarked Leitner inside, or something like it. It’s on my desk, make sure no one touches it!” Martin paled.

“A Leitner did this? Shit, um, do you feel okay?” Apparently Jon’s withering glare was still just as effective as ever, as Martin actually leaned back at the look Jon shot him. “I just mean—come on, Jon, those things can be really nasty sometimes, like, turn you inside out or drive you insane or-or something. Besides the obvious, are you okay? Are you in pain?”

Jon wanted to keep snapping and snarling, but it was a fair—and surprisingly clear-headed—question, so he gave it due consideration. Jon wiggled his fingers and toes, shifted his weight, rolled his neck. Despite the extreme transformation his body had undergone, there didn’t appear to be any negative effects. He was a little sore, but he was pretty sure those aches in his back had already been there from sitting in his chair for too long. His head was pounding, but he was willing to chalk that up to natural causes as well, considering.

“I’m fine,” Jon finally shouted back, and Martin pursed his mouth. Jon wasn’t always the best at reading facial expressions, but they were harder to miss when the face in question was the size of a billboard, and Jon got the distinct impression that Martin was suspicious of his answer. Jon did his best to project offense.

“Okay, um, good,” Martin said finally, voice soft. And then he just stared.

“What, Martin?” Jon demanded after a too-long moment of this, adjusting the tissue self-consciously.

“Sorry, sorry! Just… what do we do?”

What indeed. Jon could feel the panic trying to creep up and take him, and he threw all of his metaphorical weight into crushing it down. This was fine. Well, no, this was absolutely not fine, but as Martin had pointed out, it could be worse. He didn’t appear to be dying, and he still had all his faculties. He could work with this, never mind the fact that he couldn’t even lift a pen in his current state.

“I… We should—” Jon started, no idea what he was going to say but desperately needing to feel like he did, when a distant, echoing noise caught his attention. It was the familiar sound of a heavy door opening into the Archives. Someone else had arrived.

***

Martin had only glanced up for a second at the noise, but when he glanced back down Jon was gone. He looked around frantically and just managed to catch a trailing bit of white disappearing under Jon’s desk. Brow furrowed, Martin leaned down, and yep, there was Jon. He had his back pressed up against one of the desk legs and his chest was heaving from his brief sprint.

“Jon? Jon, what are you doing?”

It was harder to see down there than when Jon was out in the open, but Martin could just make out Jon trying to wave him off. He was pretty sure Jon was also hissing something at him, but it was much too quiet to hear any words.

“Martin, you down here?” a voice called out, and Martin jolted upright. It was Tim. Martin started to call back, then froze in indecision. He should answer, right? But it seemed like Jon wanted to hide? Martin did _not_ think that was a good idea, he didn’t want to be the only one trying to handle this, but maybe Jon had a reason?

His panic ended up not mattering, as a moment later Tim was poking his head through the uncharacteristically open door of Jon’s office.

“There you are! There was a buy one get one at the bakery so I got you…” Tim trailed off as he took in the scene. Martin, kneeling on the floor. Their boss’s clothes on the ground. An absolutely _gleeful_ grin spread across Tim’s face, and Martin felt an instinctual pang of dread; that look only ever meant pain and suffering for the target.

“Oh, my god, is it finally happening?” Tim asked, delighted.

“Is- is what happening?” Martin stuttered back, still trying to figure out his play.

“Is Jon finally getting laid?” All thoughts of deception flew out of his head as Martin proceeded to choke on his own spit. “Okay, I never thought he’d be crazy enough to do this at work, what with all his talk of _professionalism,_ but maybe that’s his thing.”

“Tim, I beg of you, stop talking.”

“Is he behind the desk? Never mind, I’ll leave you to it. Don’t worry, I won’t tell Double Boss, but you _will_ have to buy my silence from Sasha. I’m thinking—" Tim and Martin both startled as a loud voice cut him off.

“Tim, this line of conversation is entirely inappropriate, and if you do not stop at once I _will_ write you up for it.” Oh, there was Jon again. Apparently indignation had won out over whatever moment he was having, as he had now come out from under the desk, looking furious with his hands on his hips. (Which he had to stop when the tissue started slipping.)

Jon wasn’t quite shouting, just raising his voice the way he often did when Tim got him riled, and yet his words rang clearly across the room despite how quiet they had been before. Martin set that observation aside for the moment, currently more concerned with Tim’s reaction.

Tim’s eyes darted around the room as he tried to find Jon, teasing smile still in place. Then he finally looked down, and his face sort of froze.

“…Boss?”

“Yes, Tim? Do you have anything to say for yourself?”

Martin bit back a slightly hysterical laugh. Their situation was unfathomably ridiculous, and here was Jon still trying to project an air of dignity and professionalism. It was almost comforting.

Tim gaped like a fish for a moment before looking to Martin, his face the picture of utter bafflement. Normally, it would be pretty funny; Tim was good at rolling with the punches, so such a look was rare for him—but right now, Martin would really prefer someone who knew what to do.

“Are we having a party in here?”

“Gah!” Tim jumped and whipped around, revealing Sasha holding her morning coffee. “HOW did we not hear you?” Tim demanded, one hand (the one not holding a bakery baggie) clutching at his heart.

“I have my ways.” Her eyes swept the room, straight over Jon, and landed on Martin. She looked between him and the clothes on the floor. “Is Jon behind the desk?”

Jon’s sigh was loud and clear for all to hear.

**Author's Note:**

> Courage to finally post this comes from Prim_the_Amazing posting this adorable work: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26954614?view_adult=true (warning: very much Explicit)
> 
> Also, shout out to With_the_Wolves for reading my nonsense and always being so encouraging, please check out her work (she's got an awesome team-as-childhood-friends fic and a Martin-has-a-long-lost-brother fic that are both so fun)
> 
> Chapter 2 is halfway written but I think I'm gonna need to do a rewrite to include some pov changes. Positive feedback will help me write faster, so if you want to see more please leave a comment!


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